Chapter 3

About the time that the emerging Roman Republic had backstabbed the Celts and the Celts were on their way to Rome to demonstrate to the Romans that in the history of bad ideas, backstabbing your Celtic allies was in the top ten, there lived, in a small fishing village off the Northwestern Coast of Modern day Ireland, a wizard by the name of Quinn. Actually, he had a longer name than that, but being an easy going type of wizard, he preferred being called Quinn. Now, being a fairly powerful type of wizard who had survived the destruction of Atlantis, the local druids, bards, nobleman, fisherman, warriors and everyone else were very keen on keeping the Mighty Quinn an easy going kind of wizard, and so were willing to call Quinn anything Quinn wanted to be called. Quinn had even taught the local bards a song to play every time he walked into the local tavern:

"Come on out,

come on in,

you've not seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn.

Come on out,

Come on in.

When Quinn the Atlantean gets here,

Everybody's going to jump for joy."

Predictably, when Quinn the basically easy going wizard got there, everyone jumped for joy. When it was that easy to keep an easy going wizard easy going, you didn't cut corners.

As Wizards went, Quinn was all right. He kept the barbarians at bay, the local bay full of fish, and the local forest full of game. True, he took a local virgin for dalliance once every two or three years, but always returned them unharmed and with a pouch of gold to boot. Which was leagues better than what the local nobles did when they went dallying. All in all, if you had to have a wizard in the neighborhood, you could do a lot worse than the self-professed easy going Mighty Quinn. There was just one thing you did not mess with that belonged to Quinn. His true love. His great passion.

His Garden.

Now, as you can imagine, Quinn, being a wizard, could have populated his garden with the most exotic flora known to mankind.

But being the easy going kind of wizard that he was, Quinn preferred just potatoes and cabbage.

Now, all kinds of animals loved that cabbage. Quinn considered lots of remedies. Walls of fire. Ice swords of eternal vigilance. But being the easy going kind of wizard that he was, and not really wanting to blast innocent animals into their basic component molecules without due cause, he chose instead a nonviolent method.

He shrunk them. Moved them to a safe distance. And then canceled the spell. Shrunken animals tended not to repeat their mistakes.

Local boys, though, who assume a basically easy going wizard can't be as powerful as their parents inform them he is, will keep on coming back until caught. Quinn adjusted the spell so that it would shrink everything a human trespasser was wearing except his shoes and stockings. Quinn would then take the miscreant boy in hand (literally in hand, as the spell would shrink the person cast upon to 2/21st of their original size. Quinn used 2/21 as it had been a very fashionable fraction in Atlantis prior to its destruction.) to the boy's parents, and lead them to back to the garden where the boys shoes and stockings awaited them. He kept the shoes full size to prove to the parents that he, the Mighty Quinn, was not a malicious wizard who shrunk children for pure spite, but was an easy going wizard who was simply trying to protect his simple garden. To prove he was an easy going wizard, he would restore the boy in question to full size and gently admonish the parents to keep the feisty but redeemable lad under better supervision. The parents would hastily agree to do so as they dragged their children back home. The parents would then gently admonish the erring lad not to risk bringing down the wizard's wrath down on them, a fate to be avoided no matter how easy going the wizard in question was. The gentle admonishment applied to the boy by his parents usually left him unable to sit for a week.